<Begin Segment 33>

SY: So the highlights, can you give me maybe some of your favorite projects while you were working at the museum?

RN: Well, I really liked the Hawaii, the Bento to Mixed Plate project, because that gave me a whole different -- besides going to Hawaii, in addition to going to Hawaii, gave me a whole different... I didn't realize Japanese Americans lived in Hawaii. I mean, I knew, but I didn't know the history. And then their own history, but the whole multiethnic experience and the food and the customs and the pidgin language, how that all evolved, so that was very educational for me.

SY: And you did... can you explain what that project was? Was it a film within the exhibition?

RN: It was part of an exhibit, we used a lot of media in that exhibit called Bento to...

SY: Mixed Plate.

RN: Mixed Plate, yeah. And so that was... the exhibit opened at the Bishop and then traveled everywhere including Okinawa. But there were like four, three major media pieces. One was on the plantation experience, I forget the title, Plantation Roots. And then there was another one on the war experience, 'cause that's when the, basically all Hawaiian Niseis were in the 442. And it was not only that experience, but when they came back, they were able to get college educations on the GI Bill and eventually kind of took over the main politics of Hawaii including Senator Dan and all that. But that kind of started with the war, so that was called Bullets to Ballots. And then we did the Politics of Plate Lunch, which was a Sansei view of the JA, Hawaiian JA Sansei's view of JAs in Hawaii now. It was interesting 'cause in many cases, now the older JAs became the establishment. So some Sansei activists who had a different view on "who's the enemy now?" So it was the Politics of Plate Lunch. It wasn't that heavy because we couldn't do that.

SY: Uh-huh, but it was a learning experience.

RN: Yeah. Or there's that idea is in there, in the film, but we couldn't really present it as hard edged as we would like. The other was a three screen, and I don't know what it was called. It was kind of a montage of the Japanese American experience in Hawaii. Justin Lin did that for us and he was on the staff.

SY: That concept, that three screen concept was something that you really developed.

RN: We liked it a lot 'cause it was able to, like archival material where we could just see as many images as we can. 'Cause then we have that eight screen in Common Ground.

SY: It's still running?

RN: It's not supposed to -- all those things aren't supposed to be running this long. [Laugh] They're so old, it's laserdisc, it's now in the digital age, and it's amazing those things are still running.

SY: Well, it's classic, classic. [Laughs]

<End Segment 33> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.